MT is spot on here. 120-140 grains of bullet with 40+ grains of powder in a light rifle is not going to build good habits in kids. A 6.5CM is going to shove a 100lb kid about like a .30-06 moves a 200lb guy.
And I've been way more impressed with the heavy 6mm ELDM bullets than I ever was with the 85gr bullets I used to shoot in my old .243. so much so, that I built a .243AI for myself as my all-around all-ranges deer and elk rifle, and sold my 7mmRM that used to fill that role.
Kids rifle manifesto
I've chimed in on so many different "what rifle for my age XX kid?" threads that I thought I'd try to consolidate my thoughts here. My oldest son is 14 now, started shooting centerfire rifles at 9. My younger kids started shooting centerfire rifles at between 5-7 yrs old. 5 kids shooting now...
rokslide.com
There's a lot of good info from a lot of different people in this thread if you haven't read through it.
Edit: I killed a deer this year whose impact velocity would have made it a 600 yard shot with a 6ARC. I'd be extremely confident that the bullet is going to do its job at that range. That cartridge is an absolute sweetheart to shoot especially suppressed. It uses 40% less powder than my .243 and pushes the same bullet to 2600 instead of 3k. Mild recoil, mild blast, suppresses like a dream. I don't know anyone who's gotten one and not liked it.
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